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mm, so what is he doing about the fall of Ramadi then? Did he rush troops out there? The air force? Did he call upon the U.S forces already there? No, he did nothing, apart from go golfing. I get the feeling you support Nero fiddling while Rome burned as well, because you know, just because he was playing the fiddle, didn’t mean he didn’t care about Rome, right?

mikenmild

There is no actual evidence of Nero fiddling while Rome burned – that’s just a myth. It’s difficult to know what, exactly, you expected the president to do upon hearing of the loss to ISIS of an Iraqi city. Do you have any reason to think he has somehow disregarded advice on the matter in favour of going off to play golf?

Left Right and Centre

(2) Obesity and dairies etc No idea. There must be a huge market for buying shit from shitboxes. I don’t hate dairies or anything; I’m just cheap as all get out. What am I buying from a dairy ? I don’t even like paying normal budget chain supermarket prices for rubbish.

Where does all of this bloody money come from to pay for all the crap schoolkids spend at dairies ?

Anyway – it can’t all be dairies, and we all know that dietary intake is a very tough nut for Nanny Dearest to crack.

hj

Yoza (2,210 comments) says:

If the West was run on more egalitarian principles which promoted ideas like common human decency and developing sustainable environmental, social and economic systems the rest of the world would have to fall into line.
……

How come Kiribatti is so overcrowded?
Why are all the destination countries Western ones?

kowtow

colville

That Pak Christian isn’t shit stirring as you put it. How can he be when
Muslims and their apologists in gummint, academia, the media and even churches keep telling us Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance, that Jesus is a prophet of Islam, he’s in the koran, so is Mary his mother etc That jihad is an inner ,spiritual struggle?

The Crown misled the Court of Appeal by failing to disclose a document to John Banks ahead of an appeal hearing, according to a new judgment.

But the three senior judges this was an “error of judgment rather than misconduct”.

The case against Mr Banks has been thrown out and he will not face a second trial for allegedly filing a false electoral return.

“This has been absolute agony for me and my family. You have no idea,” said an elated Mr Banks.

The Court of Appeal has sensationally reversed its previous decision to order a retrial following the late disclosure of a document, which Mr Banks’ lawyer David Jones QC said “contradicts all evidence given at trial” by the Dotcom witnesses and made the prosecution “untenable”.

In a judgment just released by the Court of Appeal, Justices Ellen France, Forrest Miller and John Wild ruled that Mr Banks should not stand trial again and he was acquitted.

The senior judges disagreed with the Crown’s argument that the ‘Butler memorandum’ did not need to be disclosed.

“We hold rather that the Crown could not both withhold the memorandum and resist the appeal in the manner that it did. The effect was to mislead the Court.

“We are satisfied that there has been a serious error of process. It is, we accept, attributable to an error of judgment rather than misconduct.”

I wonder if Penny Bright will have the common decency to front up today. Not only was she wrong trumpeting that the Court of Appeal would indeed order Hon. John Banks to be retried for allegedly filing a false electoral return. But now that he has been formally acquitted by the second-highest Court in the land, she should be fronting up with an apology for all the “Dodgy John” smears, the vandalism of electoral signage, all the innuendo, and all the rest of her personal jihad against Mr Banks.

I won’t hold my breath waiting however.

And the hero today is Amanda Banks, who was so affronted that the High Court had impugned her own integrity that she turned into a detective, and discovered that the Crown’s evidence against her former husband was dodgy at best, and was a conspiracy of lies at worst. I hope the criminal charges brought by Graham McCready against Hon John Banks were not the straw that broke the backs of the Banks’ marriage. I would not want that on my conscience.

Inandout

Will the filth that financially aided McCready, now be willing to back the bush lawyer if Bank’s legals counter attack? I have yet to see a more despicable attempt at blackening a good persons’ character.

Stephie has consistently argued in favor of a military response to Islamic terrorism, including ISIS, and has just as consistently condemned militant Islamic. I don’t see how you manage to come to the conclusion that he is pro-ISIS.

From the article:
” Let’s be clear about one thing, Jones is the far right, the neocon right, the Zionist right, the Wall Street right, big money, anti-union, anti minimum wage, anti voters rights, anti education, anti science…and pro insanity. Damn this ship and all who sail on her, calling them Nazi’s is an insult to Hitler. For those who love to warn of “false flag terrorism,” this is it”

My take on Jones is that he is a classic disinformation agent. About 50% of the time he is on the money but the rest of the time he misses the mark by miles and leads his readers astray. It’s why whenever you read Infowars, you should always proceed with caution.

mikenmild

“It’s why whenever you read Infowars, you should always proceed with caution.”

Or, better yet, switch your brain on and stay away from whackjob conspiracy nuts entirely. Not a single one of them would recognize reality if they fell over it in broad daylight. ALL conspiracy theorists are in this sense engaging in disinformation.

Although the more accurate medical term would be insanity.

Steve” “Hey doc, did you know that evil Jew Zionists have joined with reptilian shapeshifting aliens from outer space to take over the world and destroy the white race?”

Doc: “No Steve I did not. Nurse, make sure that wrap around jacket is on nice and tight.”

Veterans Today is a Neo-Nazi rag, the bastard child of Der Sturmer. Like that Nazi era filth it features lots of pictures of monsters with tentacles wrapped around the globe emblazoned with Star of Davids. The intent of that dog whistling is obvious. Except to EAD. Or, then again, maybe he does get it. Disturbing either way.

Veterans Today, unlike Jones, does much more research and are much more rigorous as to what they put on their website. If they refuse to toe the PC line in order to publish the unvarnished truth, then they make no apologies as to who they may offend.

stephieboy

EAD, I don’t think so and even the text from both is different but its not surprising that both come to similar conclusions when in Salon he spouts forth this absolute nonsense,

“Not too long ago, when Oklahoma was ravaged by a super-tornado, Jones dedicated a segment of his show to a theory that President Obama uses “weather weapons” to manufacture tornadoes; and, what’s more, that he also deployed “helicopters and small aircraft” to “create and steer groups of tornadoes.” Why, exactly, would Obama want to do this? Doesn’t matter. And, by the way, why aren’t we using this awesomely destructive — and, in the real world, nonexistent — power against, say, ISIS? (The answer is obviously — because Jones believes Obama needs ISIS to exist in order to [insert another crazy conspiracy theory here].)

Incidentally, when Obama’s not using tiny helicopters to move weather events endowed with the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb, he’s busily manufacturing juice boxes to manipulate the testosterone levels of children, turning young boys gay somehow.

Again you see it’s no surprises they both reach independently similar conclusions about such a crazy moon bat mind !

stephieboy

Odakyu-sen

Has anyone got any anecdotal evidence of houses being bought my investors and then left vacant and unmaintained for a lengthy period of time?

There is a place on the minor end of Paritai Drive that has been “abandoned” for the last couple of years. (I jog past it.) I think it might have been the site of the P Lab (that put the P in to Paratai Drive several years ago).

It just seems wrong to let a house sit empty for years if you’re not going to use it, what with the government-induced housing shortage and all. (I’m not talking about contaminated properties or houses that are the focus of legal battles.) Rather, it doesn’t seem right to park your money in a property and then just leave it unused.

stephieboy

EAD, this from the wit and wisdom of PCR’s,

“The West loots the non-West and is now turning on itself with its looting of Ireland and Greece, with Italy, Spain, and Portugal the next targets for looting. The American public itself has been looted of its jobs, career aspirations, and civil liberties.”

Interest in a palace coup against Putin said growing among Russian elites

“Despite his efforts, Vladimir Putin is not a remake of Stalin and thus could be overthrown in a coup because he has not only violated the social contract he had with the Russian people but has with the murder of Boris Nemtsov shown that he is prepared to kill members of the elite who cross him, according to Ivan Yakovina.

As a result, the former Lenta.ru online specialist and current Ukrainian Novoye vremya correspondent says, some in the elite are already thinking that they must strike before he turns on them; and unlike Stalin, Putin won’t find it easy to prevent them from doing so and succeeding.”

“After riding his high approval ratings due to the invasion of the Crimean peninsula in February, President Putin is now trying to contain domestic backlash from the 50% drop in the ruble’s value against the dollar. The Kremlin has likewise grown increasingly paranoid, sensing a foreign plot by Saudi Arabia and the United States to subvert the regime through economic sanctions. In December, as Bloomberg author Joshua Yaffa recently commented, the running joke in Russia was, the ruble, a barrel of oil, and Putin would all be just over 60 after the New Year. Despite the skepticism, the concentration of capital in the hands of the energy exporters will likely rise in the near future and once firm leaders cozy up to Putin’s government, they will be clutching the last coals necessary to reignite the dying embers of their industry. As for the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, they unfortunately will have to wait outside the walls of the Kremlin in the bitter Russian cold, unable to receive benefits from the borrower of last resort.

Unfortunately for Putin, however, the greater Russian public is not alone in its doubts regarding Russia’s economic future, and there are those in the international community who feel this is one issue he will not be able to overcome.”

calendar girl

mikenmild, I don’t know about Obama playing golf while there’s other business for him to attend to.

But I do know that you yourself have had a pretty lengthy ‘lunch-break’ today – nine comments on this thread in just over four hours; 11:10am to 3:28pm. All the while keeping the wheels turning faultlessly within Wellington’s over-worked bureaucracy.

stephieboy

Reid

stephie I do wish you’d stop your lying and slandering you silly little man for if you care to scan the post I just made mere moments ago, you will find no mention whatsoever of VT.

So why are you lying and pretending I’ve said anything at all about that site?

Why are you doing that, you lying little man?

I’d like an answer, because it’s your standard tactic to do this, little man, and it happens too often, far too often for it to be an accident. So tell us why you lie like that and pretend that people have said things they haven’t, little man?

stephieboy

Meanwhile,

Macedonia

“The United State’s foreign policy is hell bent on terror and weakening any country that would prefer to be allies with Russia or China. We have seen this happen in Syria and Ukraine.
The U.S. supported anti government ‘rebels’ and thugs in both of those countries while Russia sought to help back the legitimate government in each respective country.
Such an event is now happening in Macedonia, where the U.S. is exploiting ethnic tensions and Balkanization to weaken the small country which has recently began to ally with Russia more and more.
In the age of Cold War 2.0 the U.S. understands it doesn’t have the military might to simply storm into whichever country it wants, so instead it uses thugs like the ‘Free Syrian Army’ and ‘Libyan Rebels’ to do it’s dirty work.”
Mustafa Colhan, Journalist @MustafaColhan

You don’t know this but Johnson, Blair, Reagan, all of them and more, all do this. So what?

I’m not condoning it. What I’m saying when I say: “so what” is saying, Putin is no worse or better than tens of if not hundreds of thousands of other public figures of all kinds stretching into all fields, people who you’d recognise from telly in all walks.

The fact you don’t know this because you’ve never researched it and you don’t know how it works makes YOU the one who is ignorant. So if you’re shocked by this, please don’t take your ignorance out on me by being all indignant about how “bizarre” this all this is, to you, the naive child, who, I remind you, has never looked into it yourself, so how the fuck would you know if it was true or not.

That’s what I think nasska.

As I say, Shawn’s a moron, so he hallucinates that only people he doesn’t like would do something like what he’s suggested Putin has done, he probably got that from his fav national review or something. I’d suggest to Shawn that he might want to look at his very own neocon buddies, they’re the worst offenders in this area, once you do the research. Cheney, Bush 41 for example, they’re disgusting, they really, really are.

nasska

….”The fact you don’t know this because you’ve never researched it and you don’t know how it works makes YOU the one who is ignorant. So if you’re shocked by this, please don’t take your ignorance out on me by being all indignant about how “bizarre” this all this is”….

In my defense, I didn’t know so I would hardly go looking for it but point taken Reid.

A security researcher kicked off a United Airlines flight last month after tweeting about security vulnerabilities in its system had previously taken control of an airplane and caused it to briefly fly sideways, according to an application for a search warrant filed by an FBI agent.

The Boeing 777 along with other Boeing models, can in fact be flown remotely through the use of independent embedded software and satellite communication. Once this advanced system is engaged, it can disallow any pilot or potential hijacker from controlling a plane, as the rooted setup uses digital signals that communicate with air traffic control, satellite links, as well as other government entities for the remainder of a flight’s journey.

This technology is known as the Boeing Honeywell ‘Uninterruptible’ Autopilot System.

Reid

stephieboy

Ugly Truth, there is no evidence that the so called Boeing Honeywell ‘Uninterruptible’ Autopilot System.” has been installed on any 777 or any other aircraft for that matter . As the debate in the link shows its in fact a concept and cannot do the things claimed for it like remote accessing a planes navigation system as allegedly the case of Flight 370,

wellygirl

jcuk @ 8.15pm

That is a very good post, and though I have been in Beijing for only about 6 months, I recognise and would concur with a lot of what has been said. One thing I would also add, is the one child policy, when parents and grandparents put all of the energy into one child (so that is 2 parents, 4 grandparents, and possibly great grandparents too), it would be easy for that child to grow up believing they are the centre of the world, simply because they always have been, it also takes away the possibility for learning the basics of sharing.

The privacy issue is one of the hardest things to deal with from a Western perspective in my view, whilst in many of the western style shopping centres it is fine, in some places the public toilets don’t have doors on the cubicles, and some don’t even have cubicles! It is hard enough using a Chinese toilet without doing it publically too! Also, some of the habits are pretty gross, especially the spitting in the street, they just don’t look, so it is up to you to avoid any splatter.

Edit: on another point, I saw over the summer some of the stories about the Chinese tourists and driving, in particular one about a Chinese tourist not stopping for the police when he was followed by a cop with his lights flashing, well quite simply they don’t here, the cops drive around all the time with the lights going even when not going to an emergency, so they don’t understand that the lights flashing mean they have to stop for the police.

stephieboy

MH370: Four conspiracy theories that almost got away with it,

Including the “remote uninterruptible autopilot “that fits in well with Conspiracy theorists ideas of an elitist US/israel led evil international cabal that took over Flight 370 . Just for what purpose is not that clear nor why choosing to use a Malaysian Airline on it’s way to Beijing , then turning it around and landing it Diego . Garcia. This right under the eyes of Chinese intelligence !

The responses to my posts are illuminating. Silence from Andrei and a desperate attempt to change the subject, and the usual psuedo-intellectual pap pretending to be intelligent thinking from Reid. Reid in particular gives a real example of moronic thinking when he claims “Putin is NWO.”

Until now according to Reid Putin was the heroic foe of the mythical “NWO” but now that he is revealed as a creepy pervert, he’s “NWO.”

You can’t conduct a debate with someone who changes their position every five minutes to suit their prejudice and uses conspiracy fantasies to hide behind when that is exposed.

But then what can you expect from a guy who will claim one minute that, and I’m quoting, “Jews desecrate their own graves to whip up sympathy” and the next will swear he does not hate Jews.

Manolo

MSM and crooks together:
Stephanopoulos was busted by the Washington Free Beacon last week for donating a total of $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation without disclosure to his employer or the audiences he serves. The revelation came less than one week after Stephanopoulos conducted a harsh interview with Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer, where he accused him of having a lack of evidence to support his claims that Hillary Clinton traded political favors for donations to the Clinton Foundation during her time as secretary of State. Stephanopoulos defended the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation and claimed ABC News had done a thorough investigation and found no wrongdoing — all while hiding his own donations to the organization.

Justice Minister Amy Adams was critical of the NZPIP and its members, saying self-initiated review groups were “no substitute for an impartial judicial-level review and its findings carry no legal weight”.

“I note that many of the people involved in the panel have been advocates for the defence in many high-profile cases, which could lead to perceptions that the panel reviews may not be impartial,” she said.

What is it with pollies that they can’t put their hand up when someone decides to look at the injustices that get done. seems they have the opinion that our Justice system and all its foibles can do no wrong.

Who is this fellow that’s in court in Auckland for murdering Blessie? Why the name suppression when he is plastered all over the news at night?
Has he been in big trouble before?
Is he a rugby player?
What a disgraceful system that hides the name of someone so obviously in the public eye.

What is the reason for the suppression. Can’t be rational by any standards.

“I note that many of the people involved in the panel have been advocates for the defence in many high-profile cases, which could lead to perceptions that the panel reviews may not be impartial,” she said.

I note that Amy Adams is paid by the Crown, which means that a conflict of interest exists when she comments on the integrity of the civil justice system.